What will Shanghai Disneyland bring?
- Source: People's Daily Online
- [19:15 November 05 2009]
- Comments
The long-awaited Disney theme park project in Shanghai finally became a done deal on November 4, 2009.
The first phase plan for the Shanghai Disney theme park and ancillary facilities area covers about 4 square kilometers. A 1 square kilometer theme park will serve as the core area. The investment for this phase will be about 250 billion yuan and is planned to take 5 to 6 years to complete.
What effects will Disney have on Shanghai, the Yangtze River Delta and even the national economy?
Effect One: directly stimulate related industries and neighboring economies.
The world's five major existing Disney theme parks are all powerful engines for the local economy.
Lou Jiajun, director of the Tourism Department at East China Normal University, said that Disney project is a world-class theme park, once the projects have been formally put into operation, it will attract at least 10 million tourists a year. This would bring new opportunities for development to the related modern service industry in Shanghai. This project will add new attractions to Shanghai urban tourism and drive hotels, retail, catering, exhibition, entertainment, transportation, finance, insurance, construction and other industries as well as improve Shanghai's international reputation and competitiveness.
However, some economic experts suggest that Shanghai needs to make such a huge investment in tourism project their "wealth" rather than "burden". Hou Zhigang, Associate Professor at the Shanghai-based Fudan University said that Disneyland has to learn how to continue to "win the hearts of consumers" in the network era.
Effect Two: fill the gaps in the domestic tourism industry.
Professor He Jianmin, Head of the Department of Tourism Management at Shanghai University of Finance and Economics, said that at present China's annual number of overseas tourists has reached 50 million, and most of them travel at their own expense. From this we can tell the Chinese people's travel consumer demand has not been met.
Statistics show that at present the Yangtze River Delta region receives nearly a quarter of all tourists in China, and tourism revenues accounted for nearly one-third of the whole country. But it does not have prominent tourist resources, in particular, this region lacks international tourism resources or products. The introduction of the Disney project, on the one hand helps to improve the modernization and international level of the tourism industry in Yangtze River Delta, on the other hand will also help to build the Yangtze River Delta as world tourism brand.
